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Between the Cloister and the World: The Franciscan Third Order of Colonial Querétaro

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Brian C. Belanger
Brian C. Belanger*
Affiliation:
Saint Anselm College, Manchester, New Hampshire
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Extract

“The womb of the Province” is how one eighteenth-century resident described Querétaro, for within that city the Franciscans of the Province of San Pedro y San Pablo de Michoacán supported not only the friary of Santiago el Grande with its Spanish and Indian parishes, but also the pioneering College of Santa Cruz, the convents of Santa Clara and Santa Rosa de Viterbo for women, the seminary of the Province, the mission church of San Sebastián, and the friary and shrine of Nuestra Señora de Pueblito. The city additionally served as the seat of the Provincial chapter. Friars and nuns at these various foundations directed over twenty associations of laity organized into confraternities, or cofradíos. Poised delicately between those who were professed Franciscans (male and female, of the First and Second Orders, respectively), and the lay confraternities affiliated with the monasteries, was the Third Order, an institute which has defied classification.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , October 1992 , pp. 157 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1992

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References

1 Archivo General de Indias (hereafter AGI), Mexico 2712.

2 Marion Habig, O.F.M., “Catholic Leadership toward Social Progress-The Third Order” in The Franciscan Educational Conference, vol. 17, no. 17 (November 1935), 126.Google Scholar Habig laments the lack of attention paid to the Third Order as a separate and viable Franciscan institute.

3 Brading, David A. in “Tridentine Catholicism and Enlightened Despotism in Bourbon Mexico,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 15 (1983), 1–22,CrossRefGoogle Scholar notes how little is known about Spanish lay associations of the colonial period and their disintegration in the nineteenth century. This point is furthered by Chance, John K. and Taylor, William B. in “Cofradías and Cargos: An Historical Perspective on the Mesoamerican Civil-Religious Hierarchy,” American Ethnologist, 12 (February 1985), 1–26,CrossRefGoogle Scholar who caution that since the post-independent lay association is not related to its colonial predecessor the one should not be used to study the other. For France, the most widely cited work on this era is Agulhon, perhaps Maurice, Pénitents et Francs-Maçons de l’ancienne Provence (Paris: Librairie Fayard, 1968).Google Scholar

4 Archivo Franciscano de la Provincia de Michoacán (Hereafter AFPM), Serie Q-1, legajos 3–28. Padre José Luis Soto, O.F.M. of the Academy of American Franciscan History expertly reorganized this valuable archive, located within the Franciscan friary in Celaya, Guanajuato; documents from all Franciscan institutes of the Province of Michoacán are collected here. The document numbers used in these citations, however, pre-date this reorganization. See also: Archivo General de la Nación (Hereafter AGN), Bienes Nacionales, legajo 944, exp. 3, ff. 48–89.

5 For a general discussion of colonial Querétaro see Super, John, La vida en Querétaro durante la colonia (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1973).Google Scholar

6 Habig, pp. 125–127. This Rule remained intact until its revision by Leo XIII in 1883. The exact origin of the first Rule may not be so easily determined, as suggested in The Catholic Encyclopedia. (New York, 1912), XIV, 641–642.

7 Russell-Wood, A.J.R., “Prestige, Power, and Piety in Colonial Brazil: The Third Orders of Salvador.” HAHR 69 (February 1989), 61–89;Google Scholar and Iguiniz, Juan B., Breve Historia de la Tercera Orden Franciscana en la Provincia del Santo Evangelio de Mexico desde sus Orígenes hasta Nuestros Días (México: Editorial Patria, 1951).Google Scholar Eighteen percent of the population of Querétaro for 1778 is identified as Spanish or creole and would thus have been eligible for membership (Super, p. 273).

8 AFPM, “Libro Quarto.” The alternativa was suspended from 1728 to 1743 during a dispute over governance of Santa Rosa de Viterbo, a cloister of Third Order women.

9 AFPM, Serie 0–3, legajo 3, exp. 28.

10 AFPM, L Serie 1–1, nos. 6–17: “Libros de ingresos y egresos del convento de San Francisco.”

11 Ibid., ff. 109–111.

12 AFPM, “Libro Quarto”: February 1742, and April through September 1744. Membership in several cofradías at once was never considered incompatible for there was no sense of religious Order.

13 AFPM, Serie 0–3, legajo 8, exps. 1–11.

14 AFPM, “Libro Quarto” and Montes, Mina Ramírez, Pedro de Rojas y su taller de escultura en Querétaro (Querétaro: Secretaría de Cultura, 1988).Google Scholar

15 AFPM, Serie F, legajo 1, exp. 11.

16 AFPM, “Libro Quarto”: September 1737, July 1739, and November 1752. Dominicans had a similar problem with their Third Order: AGN, Inquisición, vol. 953, exp. 9.

17 AFPM, “Libro Quarto”: 1753.

18 Biblioteca Nacional de San Agustín, Mexico City (hereafter BNSA). Colección La Fragua. “Libro de las Constituciones de Nuestra Sagrada Orden Tercera de Penitencia, 1721.” The Visitador of Tula/ Mexico City specifically ordered this reprinting of the Rule in an effort to inspire greater zeal among penitentes.

19 AFPM, “Libro Quarto”: 24 October 1729.

20 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación de la Escuela de Primeras Letras”: 7 November 1801.

21 AFPM, “Libro Quarto”: December 1749.

22 AFPM, “Libro de Constituciones y Asientos de los Hermanos de la Archicofradía del Cordón,” ff. 1–28, 91–94; AFPM, Serie F, legajo 1, exp. 11; and Viceregal and Ecclesiastical Mexico Collection, Tulane University (hereafter VEMC), legajo 48, exp. 8.

23 AFPM, Serie Q–2, legajo 212.

24 AGN, Bienes Nacionales, legajo 584, exp 3.

25 AFPM, “Libro de Constituciones y Asientos de los Hermanos de la Archicofradía del Cordón,” ff. 1–28.

26 VEMC, legajo 57, exp. 17.

27 AFPM, “Libro Quarto”: December 1749 through December 1759.

28 AGN, Cofradías y Archicofradías, vol. 6, ff. 12–19.

29 Super, La vida en Querétaro durante la colonia; Tutino, John M., “Life and Labor on North Mexican Haciendas: The Querétaro-San Luis Potosí Region, 1775–1810,” in El trabajo y los trabajadores, Frost, , Meyer, , y Vázquez, , (eds), (México: El Colegio de México, 1979);Google Scholar and Frías, Valentín, Leyendas y Tradiciones Queretanas (La Escuela de Artes de San José, 1901).Google Scholar

30 Carranza, Joseph María, Discurso sobre el establecimiento de una escuela pública gratuita de primeras letras y Christiana educación de los niños pobres (México: Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros, 1788), p. 7.Google Scholar

31 Carranza, pp. 18–36. The friar further suggested that the Third Order would fill the educational vacuum created when the Jesuits left twenty years earlier.

32 Venard, Marc, “Popular religion in the eighteenth century,” in Church and Society in Catholic Europe of the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: University Press, 1979),Google Scholar discusses the shift toward education as a major vehicle of charity and the rise of teaching orders among the notables of eighteenth century Europe. Studies of eighteenth and early nineteenth century education in Mexico include Dorothy Estrada, Tanck, La educación ilustrada, 1786–1836, 2a ed. (México, El Colegio de México, 1979);Google Scholar Vázquez, Josefina Zoraida, (ed.), Ensayos sobre la historia de la educación en México (México: El Colegio de México, 1981);Google Scholar and Foz, Pilar y Foz, , La revolución pedagógica en Nueva España, 1754–1820 (Instituto Gonzalez Fernando de Oviedo, 1981),Google Scholar which discusses the arrival from Spain of the genesis of a teaching order of women. No comparable teaching order of men was found in colonial Mexico after the expulsion of the Jesuits.

33 VEMC, “Ordenanza que para la división de la Muy Noble y Leal Ciudad de Santiago de Querétaro”; Tanck Estrada, pp. 168, 200–203; and Super, p. 101.

34 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: April 1804; and “Libro Perteneciente a la Escuela Gratuita”: accounts of 1800.

35 AFPM, “Libro Perteneciente a la Escuela Gratuita.” Support from the general treasury amounted to six percent of the total budget.

36 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: November 1798, January 1799, August 1799. The site chosen at the corner of Calle Serafín and Calle de Jayme corresponds to the present comer of Pino Suarez with Juarez. Totally new construction for classrooms is unknown for an escuela pía, at least in Mexico City (Tanck Estrada, p. 216).

37 AFPM, “Libro de Constituciones y Asientos de la Archicofradía del Cordon,” ff. 86–89. The Cordon pledged to economize on all charitable projects in order to assure funding for the school, much like the Third Order.

38 AFPM, “Libro de Constituciones y Asientos de la Archicofradía del Cordon.”

39 The Cordon had been continuously denied a license by royal officials despite the active intervention of the Corregidor Miguel Domínguez and the positive recommendation from the Viceroy in 1801. Finally, in October of 1812 the Cordón decided to open the school without a license: VEMC, legajo 48, exp. 8; and AFPM, L-l, Serie C-3, “Libro de Actas y Elecciones.”

40 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: 9 May 1805.

41 ibid.

42 AGI, Mexico 2603.

43 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: 6 June 1805 and 10 October 1805; and AGN, Cofradías y Archi-cofradías, vol. 6, ff. 12–19. Castillo y Llata himself administered the interest payments on the endowment. This was the academy’s only source of income.

44 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: January through June 1801, 13 August 1803; AFPM, “Libro Perteneciente a la Escuela Gratuita”: September 1801; and AGN, Cofradías y Archicofradías, vol. 6., ff. 10–11.

45 AFPM, Serie D, legajo 4, exp. 15; and “Libro de Fundación”: 22 May 1799.

46 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”; April 1798.

47 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: 7 November 1801.

48 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: 5 April 1804.

49 A complete description of the structure, including drawings of the floor plan and the facade, are contained in O’Gorman, Edmundo, “El catolicismo ilustrado en la Nueva España,” Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación, 18 (enero-marzo, 1947), 73–121.Google Scholar

50 O’Gorman, p. 106. Miguel Domínguez and his wife Josefa, the later celebrated Corregidora, were tertiaries. Josefa was active as an officer both before and after the 1810 revolt.

51 O’Gorman, pp. 101–105; AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: accounts of 1804 and 1805.

52 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: 7 February and 10 October 1805.

53 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: October 1813, January 1815, September 1817, andNovemer 1817.

54 The Consolidación damaged confraternities and the Third Order by discouraging participation: “Members have resigned and many are resigning since finding out about this decree concerning the pious funds.” AGN, Cofradías y Archicofradías, vol. 6, exp. 1.

55 O’Gorman, p. 110; AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: 28 June 1817.

56 O’Gorman, pp 108–120; AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: October 1813 and January 1815.

57 O’Gorman, pp. 108, 119–120.

58 AFPM, “Libro Perteneciente a la Escuela Gratuita”: March and September 1799.

59 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: lO October 1805, 31 January and 26 February 1812, and 23–28 June 1817.

60 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: 18 April 1820 and 21 May 1821.

61 Gutiérrez, Manuel Agustín, Dos discursos sobre la mucha importancia de la buena educación y enseñanza de las primeras letras a los niños (México: Juan Bautista de Arizpe, 1820), pp. 29, 42–43.Google Scholar

62 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: July through October 1821, August 1822. All 245 engravings of the academy were stolen at this time.

63 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: 13 October 1821 and 1 August 1822.

64 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: 14 December 1821, 11 January 1826, and 27 February 1828.

65 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: October through December 1825, January 1826, February 1827, and March 1828.

66 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: 22 October 1825, 11 January 1826, and 13 October 1827.

67 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: 9 November and 12 April 1826.

68 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: 20 January and 10 May 1826.

69 AFPM, “Libro de Fundación”: August through September 1817, March through April 1828.

70 AFPM, “Libro de elecciones y capítulos”: October 1828. Information on the drawing academy in the later nineteenth century is given in Frías, Leyendas y Tradiciones Queretanas.

71 Gloriosso principio de la esclarecida Orden Tercera (México: Viuda de Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, 1744); and Iguiniz, p. 11. The tertiaries at Santa Rosa de Viterbo constituted another aspect of Third Order life, that followed by oblatas, or donadas, who sought greater perfection through life in the cloister (Iguiniz, p. 55).

72 Rodrigálvez Tratado, Juan Antonio, histórico-canónico de las cofradías de christianos (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1785), pp. 73–74.Google Scholar